Policy Experimentation in China: The Political Economy of Policy Learning

Shaoda Wang and David Y. Yang

Journal of Political Economy, 2025, vol. 133, issue 7, 2180 - 2228

Abstract: Governments use policy experiments to facilitate learning, but the nature and effects of these experiments remain unclear. We analyze China's policy experimentation since 1980—among the most systematic in history—and document three facts. First, most experiments exhibit positive sample selection. Second, local politicians exert excessive efforts during experiments that are not replicable during policies’ national rollout. Third, the central government is not fully sophisticated when interpreting experimentation outcomes. These facts suggest that policy learning may be biased and national policies may be distorted. Thus, while China’s institutions enable experimentation at an unparalleled scale, the complex political environments can also limit effective policy learning.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/734873 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/734873 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucp:jpolec:doi:10.1086/734873

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Political Economy from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().